Paradiso

Canto II

The First Heaven, or that of the moon, in which are seen the spirits of those who, having taken monastic vows, were forced to violate them.

O Ye, who in some pretty little boat,¹Eager to listen, have been followingBehind my ship, that singing sails along,Turn back to look again upon your shores;Do not put out to sea, lest peradventure,In losing me, you might yourselves be lost.The sea I sail has never yet been passed;Minerva breathes, and pilots me Apollo,²And Muses nine point out to me the Bears.Ye other few who have the neck upliftedBetimes to th’ bread of Angels upon which³One liveth here and grows not sated by it,Well may you launch upon the deep salt-seaYour vessel, keeping still my wake before youUpon the water that grows smooth again.Those glorious ones who unto Colchos passed⁴Were not so wonder-struck as you shall be,When Jason they beheld a ploughman made!The con-created and perpetual thirst⁵For the realm deiform did bear us on,As swift almost as ye the heavens behold.Upward gazed Beatrice, and I at her;And in such space perchance as strikes a bolt⁶And flies, and from the notch unlocks itself,Arrived I saw me where a wondrous thingDrew to itself my sight; and therefore sheFrom whom no care of mine could be concealed,Towards me turning, blithe as beautiful,Said unto me: “Fix gratefully thy mindOn God, who unto the first star has brought us.”It seemed to me a cloud encompassed us,Luminous, dense, consolidate and brightAs adamant on which the sun is striking.Into itself did the eternal pearlReceive us, even as water doth receiveA ray of light, remaining still unbroken.If I was body, (and we here conceive notHow one dimension tolerates another,Which needs must be if body enter body,)More the desire should be enkindled in usThat essence to behold, wherein is seenHow God and our own nature were united.There will be seen what we receive by faith,Not demonstrated, but self-evidentIn guise of the first truth that man believes.I made reply: “Madonna, as devoutlyAs most I can do I give thanks to HimWho has removed me from the mortal world.But tell me what the dusky spots may beUpon this body, which below on earthMake people tell that fabulous tale of Cain?”⁷Somewhat she smiled; and then, “If the opinionOf mortals be erroneous,” she said,“Where’er the key of sense doth not unlock,Certes, the shafts of wonder should not pierce theeNow, forasmuch as, following the senses,Thou seest that the reason has short wings.But tell me what thou think’st of it thyself.”And I: “What seems to us up here diverse,⁸Is caused, I think, by bodies rare and dense.”And she: “Right truly shalt thou see immersedIn error thy belief, if well thou hearestThe argument that I shall make against it.Lights many the eighth sphere displays to you⁹Which in their quality and quantityMay noted be of aspects different.If this were caused by rare and dense alone,One only virtue would there be in allOr more or less diffused, or equally.Virtues diverse must be perforce the fruitsOf formal principles; and these, save one,Of course would by thy reasoning be destroyed.Besides, if rarity were of this dimness¹⁰The cause thou askest, either through and throughThis planet thus attenuate were of matter,Or else, as in a body is apportionedThe fat and lean, so in like manner thisWould in its volume interchange the leaves.Were it the former, in the sun’s eclipseIt would be manifest by the shining throughOf light, as through aught tenuous interfused.This is not so; hence we must scan the other,And if it chance the other I demolish,Then falsified will thy opinion be.But if this rarity go not through and through,There needs must be a limit, beyond whichIts contrary prevents the further passing,And thence the foreign radiance is reflected,Even as a color cometh back from glass,The which behind itself concealeth lead.¹¹Now thou wilt say the sunbeam shows itselfMore dimly there than in the other parts,By being there reflected farther back.From this reply experiment will free theeIf e’er thou try it, which is wont to beThe fountain to the rivers of your arts.Three mirrors shalt thou take, and two removeAlike from thee, the other more remoteBetween the former two shall meet thine eyes.Turned towards these, cause that behind thy backBe placed a light, illuming the three mirrorsAnd coming back to thee by all reflected.Though in its quantity be not so ampleThe image most remote, there shalt thou seeHow it perforce is equally resplendent.Now, as beneath the touches of warm raysNaked the subject of the snow remains¹²Both of its former color and its cold,Thee thus remaining in thy intellect,Will I inform with such a living light,That it shall tremble in its aspect to thee.¹³Within the heaven of the divine repose¹⁴Revolves a body, in whose virtue liesThe being of whatever it contains.The following heaven, that has so many eyes,¹⁵Divides this being by essences diverse,Distinguished from it, and by it contained.The other spheres, by various differences,All the distinctions which they have within themDispose unto their ends and their effects.Thus do these organs of the world proceed,As thou perceivest now, from grade to grade;Since from above they take, and act beneath.Observe me well, how through this place I comeUnto the truth thou wishest, that hereafterThou mayst alone know how to keep the ford.The power and motion of the holy spheres,As from the artisan the hammer’s craft,Forth from the blessed motors must proceed.The heaven, which lights so manifold make fair,From the Intelligence profound, which turns it,¹⁶The image takes, and makes of it a seal.And even as the soul within your dustThrough members different and accommodatedTo faculties diverse expands itself,So likewise this Intelligence diffusesIts virtue multiplied among the stars,Itself revolving on its unity.Virtue diverse doth a diverse alloyageMake with the precious body that it quickens,In which, as life in you, it is combined.From the glad nature whence it is derived,The mingled virtue through the body shines,Even as gladness through the living pupil.From this proceeds whate’er from light to lightAppeareth different, not from dense and rare:This is the formal principle that produces,¹⁷According to its goodness, dark and bright.”

The Heaven of the Moon, in are seen the spirits of those having taken monastic vows, were forced to violate them. In Dante’s symbolism this heaven represents the first science of the Trivium. Convito, II 14:— “I say that the heaven of the Moon resembles Grammar; because it may be compared therewith; for if the Moon be well observed, two things are seen peculiar to it, which are not seen in the other stars. One is the shadow in it, which is nothing but the rarity of its body, in which the rays of the sun cannot terminate and be reflected as in the other parts. The other is the variation of its brightness, which now shines on one side, and now upon the other, according as the sun looks upon it. And Grammar has these two properties; since, on account of its infinity, the rays of reason do not terminate in it in any special part of its words; and it shines now on this side, and now on that, inasmuch as certain words, certain declinations, certain constructions, are in use which once were not, and many once were which will be again.” For the influences of the Moon. The introduction to this canto is at once a warning and an invitation. Balbi, Life and Times of Dante, II Ch. 15, Mrs. Bunbury’s Tr., says:— “The last part of the Commedia, which Dante finished about this time (1320), … is said to be the most difficult and obscure part of the whole poem. And it is so; and it would be in vain for us to attempt to awaken in the generality of readers that attention which Dante has not been able to obtain for himself. Readers in general will always be repulsed by the difficulties of its numerous allegories, by the series of heavens, arranged according to the now forgotten Ptolemaic system, and more than all by disquisitions on philosophy and theology which often degenerate into mere scholastic themes. With the exception of the three cantos relating to Cacciaguida, and a few other episodes which recall us to earth, as well as those verses in which frequently Dante’s love for Beatrice shines forth, the Paradiso must not be considered as pleasant reading for the general reader, but as an especial recreation for those who find there, expressed in sublime verse, those contemplations that have been the subjects of their philosophical and theological studies. … But few will always be the students of philosophy and theology, and much fewer those who look upon these sciences as almost one and the same thing, pursued by two different methods; these, if I am not mistaken, will find in Dante’s Paradiso a treasure of thought, and the loftiest and most soothing words of comfort, forerunners of the joys of Heaven itself. Above all, the Paradiso will delight those who find themselves, when they are reading it, in a somewhat similar disposition of mind to that of Dante when he was writing it; those in short who, after having in their youth lived in the world, and sought happiness in it, have now arrived at maturity, old age, or satiety, and seek by the means of philosophy and theology to know as far as possible of that other world on which their hopes now rest. Philosophy is the romance of the aged, and Religion the only future history for us all. Both these subjects of contemplation we find in Dante’s Paradise, and pursued with a rare modesty, not beyond the limits of our understanding, and with due submission to the Divine Law which placed these limits.” ↩
In the other parts of the poem “one summit of Parnassus” has sufficed; but in this Minerva, Apollo, and the nine Muses come to his aid, as wind, helmsman, and compass. ↩
The bread of the Angels is Knowledge or Science, which Dante calls the “ultimate perfection.” Convito, I 1:— “Everything, impelled by the providence of its own nature, inclines towards its own perfection; whence, inasmuch as knowledge is the ultimate perfection of our soul, wherein consists our ultimate felicity, we are all naturally subject to its desire. … O blessed those few who sit at the table where the bread of the Angels is eaten.” ↩
The Argonauts, when they saw their leader Jason ploughing with the wild bulls of Aeëtes, and sowing the land with serpents teeth. Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII, Tate’s Tr.:— “To unknown yokes their brawny necks they yield, / And, like tame oxen, plough the wondering field. / The Colchians stare; the Grecians shout, and raise / Their champion’s courage with inspiring praise. / Emboldened now, on fresh attempts he goes, / With serpent’s teeth the fertile furrows sows; / The glebe, fermenting with enchanted juice, / Makes the snake’s teeth a human crop produce.” ↩
This is generally interpreted as referring to the natural aspiration of the soul for higher things; characterized in Purgatorio XXI 1, as “The natural thirst that ne’er is satisfied, / Excepting with the water for whose grace / The woman of Samaria besought.” But Venturi says that it means the “being borne onward by the motion of the Primum Mobile, and swept round so as to find himself directly beneath the moon.” ↩
As if looking back upon his journey through the air, Dante thus rapidly describes it in an inverse order, the arrival, the ascent, the departure; the striking of the shaft, the flight, the discharge from the bowstring. Here again we are reminded of the arrow of Pandarus, Iliad, IV 120. ↩
Cain with his bush of thorns. See note 300. ↩
The spots in the Moon, which Dante thought were caused by rarity or density of the substance of the planet. Convito, II 14:— “The shadow in it, which is nothing but the rarity of its body, in which the rays of the sun cannot terminate and be reflected, as in the other parts.” Milton, Paradise Lost, V 419:— “Whence in her visage round those spots unpurged, / Vapors not yet into her substance turned.” ↩
The Heaven of the Fixed Stars. ↩
Either the diaphanous parts must run through the body of the Moon, or the rarity and density must be in layers one above the other. ↩
As in a mirror, which Dante elsewhere, Inferno XXIII 25, calls impiombato vetro, leaded glass. ↩
The subject of the snow is what lies under it; “the mountain that remains naked,” says Buti. Others give a scholastic interpretation to the word, defining it “the cause of accident,” the cause of color and cold. ↩
Shall tremble like a star. “When a man looks at the stars,” says Buti, “he sees their effulgence tremble, and this is because their splendor scintillates as fire does, and moves to and fro like the flame of the fire.” The brighter they burn, the more they tremble. ↩
The Primum Mobile, revolving in the Empyrean, and giving motion to all the heavens beneath it. ↩
The Heaven of the Fixed Stars. “Greek Epigrams,” III 62:— “If I were heaven, / With all the eyes of heaven would I look down on thee.” Also Catullus, “Carm.,” V:— “How many stars, when night is silent, / Look on the furtive loves of men.” And Milton, Paradise Lost, V 44:— “Heaven wakes with all his eyes / Whom to behold but thee, nature’s desire?” ↩
The Intelligences, ruling and guiding the several heavens, (receiving power from above and distributing it downward, taking their impression from God and stamping it like a seal upon the spheres below,) according to Dionysius the Areopagite are as follows:— The Seraphim, — Primum Mobile. The Cherubim, — The Fixed Stars. The Thrones, — Saturn. The Dominions, — Jupiter. The Virtues, — Mars. The Powers, — The Sun. The Principalities, — Venus. The Archangels, — Mercury. The Angels, — The Moon. See note 1986. ↩
The principle which gives being to all created things. ↩